An unidentified young athlete (above) finished the 100-plus yard race for her age group in the Grandma's Marathon Whipper Snapper Races for Kids on Friday afternoon at Bayfront Festival Park in Duluth. Below, I presume that this is her father encouraging her along the 100-yard course.

More than 17,000 runners from around the world will participate in the 37th annual Grandma’s Marathon events this weekend. Howie / DuluthWaterfront.com

Hermantown (Minn.) Middle School fourth-grader Sydney Hanson is starring in the independent short film Princess: A Dark Fairy Tale. She plays a girl named Angel, who is trapped in an ageless reflection since 1890. The film has begun -- and it has already been an amazing and fun experience for Sydney.

The director of the film, Vanessa Miles, chose Sydney for the film through Agency Models and Talent in Minneapolis.

After starting to work on the Princess Film Project, Vanessa heard Sydney sing and asked to have her sing for the film. After learning several songs that were in the running for the film, Vanessa decided to have Sydney sing along with Sam Hart, on his original song Amnesia. Sam is a popular singer best known for his Mario Cart love song.

While recording Amnesia for the film, Sydney also recorded four other songs that were in the running for the film that will be shown in behind-the-scenes footage. They are also in the process of filming music videos for all the songs. Some of the video shooting was done in Minneapolis and the director is coming to Duluth to do some of the filming for the videos in Duluth and near Lake Superior. The shooting of the film is in Minneapolis and will be completed in June.

In the middle of all this going on, last week in Minnetonka Sydney hit the recording studio again to record her first two original songs. Her song writer and agent are submitting her songs for some up-coming projects. Her songs and music videos are on YouTube, here.

Sydney is a very busy girl. Besides modeling and acting she has been taking voice lessons from Dana Copiskey at Dana Caroll’s Music Studio since she was seven-years-old and been dancing at Madill Performing Art Center since she was four. She is on Madill’s dance competition team for jazz, ballet and tap.

Sydney has also been involved with plays at the Duluth Playhouse, and loves the stage for both her singing and dancing. She also has taken guitar lessons for the past year.

Sydney, who turns 10 today (May 15), loves school and also plays soccer. She is a happy girl with energy that never ends.

I'm organizing an adult co-ed kick ball demonstration event at Duluth 4th Fest on Thursday, July 4 at Bayfront Festival Park. Cost is only $50 per team, and six team openings remain. All teams will play two games. The Duluth 4th Fest celebration draws tens of thousands of visitors to Duluth's waterfront district each summer, for the free concerts and fireworks, and the kick ball games are expected to draw hundreds of spectactors. eMail me here if your team wants to play in the kick ball event.

Up North Pulse

On the new Vikings stadium design:

Duluth Mayor Don Ness: "It's certainly bold. With this sort of leap in architecture, the proof will be in how well in holds up in twenty years. Hopefully the space will provide a great experience for the fans and the players and the building itself will become an iconic structure that all Minnesotans will take pride in. This stadium needs to stay relevant for 50 years to make the investment worthwhile. Sometimes ultra-modern designs don't age well and you find additional unanticipated issues. Personally, I prefer the classic, traditional structures, but I know there were some very talented people working on this design. Hopefully they have designed a stadium that will become the new standard for football stadiums for the coming century."

Fred Friedman -- "Nice stadium, nice design. More wealth for the Wilfs .... The Greeks and Romans of two millennia ago would be very excited."

Minnesota-Duluth football coach Curt Wiese: "Looks like a state-of-the-art facility. The Twin Cities area deserves a high-quality place to watch the Vikes."